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St
George, Rollesby

Something
extraordinary happened to the Church of England
during the middle years of the 19th century. For
generations, it had been an arm of the state, the
rock upon which the protestant nation was built.
But a series of reform acts in the 1820s and
1830s made that rock tremble.

Firstly,
many of the administrative functions of the
Church were taken away and handed to secular
authorities. And then, even worse, Catholicism
was decriminalised. Suddenly, it was possible for
Christians to worship without owing allegiance to
the Crown or to the Bible of non-conformism.
Where did the Church of England's identity now
subsist? Was it to be sidelined as a mere
protestant sect?

A group of
academics at Oxford University sprang into action. They
called for the restablishment of Anglicanism as a
National Church. They issued a series of tracts,
explaining the historic roots of the Church of England,
and its self-perception as a Church with an apostolic
tradition. Because of this, they became known as the
Tractarians, or the Oxford Movement.

The
great majority of the British people in the 1830s
and 1840s had a serious mistrust of anything that
had happened before the 16th century Protestant
Reformation. It smacked of Popery; but the
Tractarians took on the task of smoothing over
the Reformation gap and re-establishing the
connection between the 19th century church and
its medieval predecessor.

They made a
spectacularly successful job of this, and as a
result the Church of England was changed forever.
In just about every parish in the land, Anglican
churches were restored to their medieval
integrity.

Sacramental
chancels were refitted, the old protestant furnishings
thrown out, and surviving medieval artefacts rediscovered
with alacrity and restored enthusiastically to use. By
the 1870s, Anglican churches were once again a riot of
colour and ceremony, where only half a century before
most had been dull, plain, preaching boxes.

There
were, of course, casualties. In seeking out the Catholic
medieval roots of the Church, Oxford's academics had also
painfully exposed the gap between the modern Church of
England and the essential nature of Catholicism. Was it
really possible to find a middle way between what
Anglicanism believed itself to be, and what it was unable
to demonstrate as a reality? Or had the Reformation
really been a fracture?

Inevitably,
since the touchstone of Catholicism is the
Apostolic succession, thousands of people, mainly
intellectual and upper-middle class, left the
Church of England to be received into the
Catholic Church. But the central project of the
Tractarians had succeeded. They re-established
the Church of England as the spiritual and
ceremonial pulse of the Nation.

Tractarianism
was fully in the ascendant, becoming
Anglo-catholicism as the century progressed, and
reaching its peak during the First World War, as
the Church provided the triumphalism necessary
for the fight, and the authority to mourn for its
casualties afterwards.

But the
First World War had broken the spell. Reaching a peak in
the 1930s, the ceremonies and liturgies of the High
Church wing began to ring hollow, and by the 1950s and
1960s the Anglo-catholics were a minority. Newer
spiritual currents were running deeper; evangelicalism
was undergoing a renaissance, especially in the cities.
After the 1992 decision to ordain women as Priests,
Anglo-catholicism fragmented; the larger, liberal wing
sought out a quieter, more intellectual spirituality. The
spiky, militant wing was left to sulk outside the doors
of the Church, administered by Flying Bishops and treated
as an exotic flower. How much longer can it bloom, or
even survive?

And
yet, something remains. Because the great wave of
restoration in the 19th century, handsomely
bankrolled as it was by the booming economy and a
new, wealthy landed class, produced a massive
refurnishing of English churches, not least in
the way of stained glass. That the windows are
full of coloured glass would be the most
startling change a 18th century Anglican would
notice if he could visit a church today.

In the 20th
century, as Anglo-catholicism retreated, and High
Church ceremonial disappeared, the glass
remained. And so it does today, often the only
surviving evidence of that remarkable time.

There
seems to have been a lot of money about in this part of
Norfolk during those years, because the churches were, in
the main, extensively restored and furnished. Much of
this has gone today, but as I say, the glass remains, and
here at Rollesby there is an impressive collection. At
Ormesby St Margaret up the road, the medievalisation of
the building was paid for by the Lacon brewing family,
but here the benefactor was the Rector himself.

The gift
of the living, £657 a year, about £130,000 in today's
money, was in the hands of the Tacon family, and in 1872
the current owner, Richard John Tacon, presented himself
to the living. He was to remain Rector for nearly sixty
years, and in that time he would transform the interior
of this church. Because of him, St George has one of the
largest collections of Victorian glass east of Norwich.
In this area, only Ormesby St Margaret and Filby have
more, and they are much bigger churches than this one.

I mention
all this before anything else merely to illustrate the
point that English churches are rarely evidence of
continuity, but of the drama of violence and ideas. The
architectural historian Andy Foster has described history
as a palimpsest, but not all historical periods write
with equally heavy hands. The character of St George
today is almost entirely the work of the Reverend Tacon -
and yet, he has been dead eighty years, and virtually
nothing in the Church of England remains the same. The
liturgy has changed, ideas and attitudes have changed,
and certainly the centrality of the church in mainstream
English life has changed, and gone for good. And yet
still these windows remain.

I
want to tell you something very curious about
Rollesby church. This part of Norfolk still
retains much of its High Church ceremonial
tradition (just as the Norwich Diocese retains
more than most in England) and it is still
possible to light a candle in Rollesby church. At
least, it is but it isn't; for St George is kept
locked, and there is no keyholder notice.

And here's
an odder thing. A sign beside the candlestand
reads VOTIVE CANDLES: Candles offered in
fulfillment of a promise to remember those we
love and who have died or who are ill. Light a
candle and place it in the tray in memory of the
person or persons for whom you are praying and
remembering. A pretty idea, but that's not
what votive candles are for at all, and certainly
the explanation sits ill at ease with Anglican
theology.

I have
expressed my doubts before on this site about the pagan
cult of the dead that seems to inhabit graveyards these
days; so many people worshipping their ancestors' graves
with flowers, but no Christian intentions. And why should
they, when so many of the churches are kept locked? They
could not pray for their ancestors' souls in the presence
of the Blessed Sacrament even if they wanted to.

Is
this sign in the church a mark of the way
Christianity is naturally developing? Or a
cynical attempt to preserve one last
Anglo-catholic devotion by handing it over to
other uses? But how would graveyard users ever
make use of it if they cannot get into the
church? I really didn't understand, so I went
outside and wandered around.

It was a
bright spring day. The blue sky set off
beautifully Rollesby's magnificent chancel with
its crowning pinnacle figures. The nave, aisles
and chancel, unusually for Norfolk, are almost
entirely of the Decorated period, the early 14th
century, with little of the more familiar
Perpendicular architecture of a century and more
later.

The
clerestory in particular is a textbook example of the
period, and look out for the cusping on the south
doorway. The window tracery is largely Victorian, and the
top of the tower probably late 13th century, and possibly
contemporary with the building of the nave and chancel.
The lower part of the tower is so restored that I found
it hard to tell how old it was.

I went
back inside. St George has three interesting memorials,
all of them a bit battered. Recining at a precarious
angle on the north side of the sanctuary is Rose Claxton,
in late 16th century dress.

She
looks rather as if she's just been stuck up the
corner because they can't think what else to do
with her, poor thing, but her inscription assures
us otherwise:

Across
from her is Leonard Mapes of Beeston next Norwich with
his wife and his children in alabaster, all praying
together.He died in 1619, and it looks as if the top of
his memorial is missing. My favourite is stuck under the
tower; this is a very simple memorial to Hannah Watson,
who died in 1810. Just in front of her is the font, one
of several local Purbeck marble fonts reset on a
collonade. Inside it is a portable font of the sort used
by energetic 19th century Rectors.

And
there are a couple of curiosities that are worth
mentioning. Although the nave and chancel appear
broadly contemporary, the arcades do not match up
with the chancel. Simply, the chancel is too
wide.

What happened here? The obvious
answer is that the arcades replaced the walls of
an earlier church, and the chancel was built
independently of this work. In the south-east
corner of the chancel is a very curious
structure, a little room built into the
sanctuary. It must be a sacristy of some
kind - what else could it be? But why is there
nothing like it anywhere else in East Anglia?